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Heaven and Hell

1 - 1011 - 2021
Time Zone: EST (New York, Toronto)
Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 3/2/2023 9:59:13 AM
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I'm talking a lot about material wealth, honestly, because the garden was never strictly figurative. Garden + Dominion = wealth and power. It is simply unhealthy to have an imbalance. The stress that comes from not being able to pay bills is like torture. And you're more likely to have a master/employer the less you own. This isn't to say that poor people cannot be happy in spite of poverty. I'm simply saying that's not heaven. And it's often the thought of heaven that allows people in poverty to cope with their condition.

And we can go all through the bible and find how wealth played a factor in many stories, whether it is Abraham who was wealthy enough to be his own country, Jacob who tricked his brother for his inheritance, Moses who told the Hebrews to "borrow" gold from the Egyptians, the book of Numbers dividing up their spoils, or the invasion of Canaan, who crossed over Jordan, and the eventual Roman taxes that they felt threatened their livelihoods to the point were they were willing to fight an empire. It is very easy to get sucked into the idea that the spiritual journey has nothing to do with wealth or power, but the people who mainly benefit from this theory are preachers who are rarely ever poor.

If you want to build a personal heaven around yourself, it has to be done in all levels of life: physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional.

If one of these is out of balance it will create greater stress on the others. So there is a part of your personal garden that has to do with your physical body. And you can consider that a gift since it didn't come from you. How then do you tend to the needs of your physical body? Do you only take out a few weeds and use it just for what you can get out of it? Or do you put more effort into making it better? Stronger? Faster? Invest in it. Won't you live longer and live better if your body feels good? Part of your garden is mental. What do you feed your mind? What thoughts do you entertain? What do you know how to do? Part of your garden is spiritual. Do you understand symbols? Do you have wisdom about life? Are you growing into a better person? Part of your garden is emotional. Who do you love? Who's loving you? What about your family? What about friends? How are you sharing love and having love shared with you? Inside your garden are a variety of trees representing different decisions. The trees that grow are the seeds you plant. Do you want to be happy? You have to plant things that will make you happy. My house is my happy place. After work I can go home, knowing that there are things I love to see and do; so much that I can't even do them all every day. I work and struggle to earn enough to afford my lifestyle and standard of living. And I understand the feeling in Genesis 1 when it says "And it was good".

That place of peace, love, contentment... I cannot put a price on that. It's priceless. Wealth is not necessarily about how rich you are or how much money you have. It's that feeling of being full after a delicious meal. Satisfied.

What's in your garden is something that grows and grows and grows, fed by the pure energy of the sun. But in every garden is the specter of corruption; the fruit of the tree you should never eat from. And that represents the choices you make that are poisonous to yourself. Because if you take in that poison you will get sick. And if you are going around with this sickness it will negatively affect not just your own survival but how you interact with others. What if your sickness spreads to others? Eve gave Adam the fruit and so they were both poisoned. Whatever lived inside the fruit transferred into them.

What if your greed for money or your lust for power goes too far that people can't afford to pay for your services without going broke or having to pay money to an insurance company? That's the forbidden fruit. It's not simply the fruit itself but the idea that you have all these other choices but it's not enough. We have so many ways to make money and to build and to create. Why can't it be enough? Whether it's selling harmful drugs or stealing, it's all the same thing except that greed is perfectly legal in capitalism. That doesn't mean it's not a form of theft. The Hebrews were fond of usury. That doesn't mean it's not theft. These are the things that take heaven away from others which means those same methods allow others to take heaven away from us.

So again... it's all about getting a position of balance so that we can be independent and create our own garden in that balanced state. Everything else will fall into place because it will be attracted to you and the positive conditions you create around you. Everyone wants to live in Canaan. No one wants to walk around a desert or plant a garden there. All life adapts to the conditions in its environment but which environments are teaming with life? Deserts? Or jungles? The right environment makes all the difference but we have to build it and maintain it. Otherwise, more of the world will turn hostile.



Messenger: JAH Child Sent: 3/4/2023 8:46:35 AM
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Greetings Beloveds

Give Ises IPX for the thorough answer, in a way though it was far too thorough. What I was asking about is more practical ways to keep the vibration high. The I answer was really "be in balance" but I was looking more for actual actions that keep one in balance.

For example:

+Sleep enough but not too much. Use melatonin or CBD if needed to sleep.

+Make sure your job is not taking too much out of you. If it's too stressful, seek a better situation. Ones might be surprised what happens when you just ask/go out on a limb and try to find a better job.

+Plant an actual garden. This metaphorical story of the garden aside, just getting out there with your hands in the soil and then seeing green pop up from the seeds you plant, this can be very satisfying.

+For me, I found it helps to clean my stones and crystals at least once a moon. If you have crystals I think it's easy to neglect cleaning them but it makes a huge difference. Even if only mentally.

+IPX Ninja talked about making your home your happy place. Also earlier about keeping your surroundings clean. I think this goes hand in hand. Use decor that is personally pleasing, use colors that personally appeal to your senses, use textures that comfort you, to create a home atmosphere that is inviting to your own psyche.

+I mentioned yoga and meditation before. I find that if I do my practice shortly after waking up in the morning, and if I play good music either meditation flutes, om chanting, or even a great dub tune like Jungle Dub by Bob Marley, this helps the process a lot. Sometimes I am lazy about it and I leave a podcast running while I do yogasana (the stretching actions of yoga) but this greatly diminishes the experience so I try and be disciplined to turn off my podcast and turn on some good meditation music.

+Music in general helps a lot to enhance the vibrations, to uplift, to soothe.

+Acupuncture... I know it's scary to have needles put all over your body but it truly helps reduce stress and give a euphoric feeling

Trying to make this list easy and digestable because anyone who is feeling down/needs a lift in vibration can open it up and go one by one. Also trying to avoid talking about using cannabis because even though in my experience it does lift the vibrations for the moment, it is not an accessable method for everyone, for various reasons, and I myself am having to find other ways aside from cannabis to cheer my own mood.

I think I will start another thread about grieving and how to complete the grieving process, because that is another factor I think. Sometimes we're feeling down because of actual losses and huge traumas that we carry and it's both necessary to grieve these things but also to complete the grieving process and let them go. Just trying to sweep everything under the rug to feel happy or raise the vibration, this is not healthy either.

Anyone who can add to my list please do! Honestly it's for myself as much as it's for anyone else who might need it. As I personally am facing hard times emotionally because of those losses, it's helpful to find tactics and tools to use that can help me cultivate a more happy life.

Give thankhs as always for the I deep thoughts and historical frameworks though IPX, I did read it all and it's all true although just not the applicable tools I was looking for in my question.

More Love
Selah Say I





Messenger: Cedric Sent: 3/5/2023 1:22:00 PM
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Blessed Love Iahs

Give thanks for this post.

One suggestion I might add to the list is to just be in and Isperience nature. The more nature InI can surround InI selves with the better! I am blessed enough to be able to walk out I door into the natural world where I can't really hear human noises that often. Instead I can hear the snow falling onto the tress and the I birds talking with each other. Almost every night I can hear the coyotes talk with each other as they hunt. They are so loud I can hear them through the walls and window glass haha. A few nights ago it was special because I could hear one talking to another from two different sides of the line they were running. Often the big owls will pass through and call to each other as they look for mice or rabbits. Taking the time to watch a tiny bug traverse a clump of moss can be a reminder for I how big this world that InI live in is, and how even the smallest things are a blessed wonder.

For I that healing power of nature can not be overstated. I like the idea of growing a garden physically and mentally. I also think being in nature's garden and reflecting on the power found everywhere in that garden is very beneficial.

HIM Haile Selassie I & Empress Menen I Love


Messenger: JAH Child Sent: 3/5/2023 8:55:44 PM
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Greetings Cedric,
Yes give thankhs for that suggestion.
Going for a hike is one of my favorite ways to reunite with nature and rediscover the beauty of Life. I agree. Although hahaha I really have to admit walking outdoors in the snow is not in my preference haha give me a sunny southern california day please! I especially love the smells of sage and other desert bushes growing out in the hills where I hike.

On that note:
Burn some sage. It's trite I know but "smudging" or burning sage is very good for cleansing the home. I love to burn sage and then burn frankincense after. Cleanse the energy and then sanctify the energy.

Another suggestion:
Take an epsom salt bath. Epsom salt/sea salt. While yes it does help with sore muscles, salt is also a cleansing element energetically as well.

Let's keep adding to this list!
Loving it...
Give Ises


Messenger: seestem Sent: 3/6/2023 12:32:53 PM
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IPXninja:
> Heaven is not a place. Hell is not a place.

Yes I. I agree with this. If they were in fact places, it would mean that people do good because they want to end up in heaven and not because they want to do good.

IPXninja:
> Heaven and Hell are temporal states of the future.

I don't know what the I means by this. Maybe it is because I don't believe in time from the point of view of consciousness, the self is the now, and the now is the self.



Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 3/7/2023 5:12:29 PM
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states of the future means that now is now... In the next moment now becomes the past and the future becomes now. Feel me?

From moment to moment you have the potential and possibility to make the future better. I think the list of things JAHChild started is great. I'm not saying now isn't important. I'm saying past present and future are all relative positions in time that are ALL equally important.

It is from the past that I learn about possible futures. And I can compare past and future to see where I am right NOW. If I am in the right or the wrong place, if things can be better or worse.

If you get scared in the moment do you go into a bomb shelter? Or do you understand that whatever you might be concerned about exists in time just like you do and likely has both an alpha and an omega.

And so this is part of why I talked about investing. Honestly, I don't think we talk about that enough. Because we all live in the present and must be mindful of it but if you can't see the road ahead you'll likely crash as soon as it turns. And that's life. Life twists and turns. You won't always be young and able to work.

And so it's good to own and not rent, invest not borrow, etc. Because every moment that passes, the future is constantly becoming your present.


Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 3/7/2023 5:37:18 PM
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As far as the list goes...


I mean there are infinite possibilities. And some of it just depends on what you're personally into. I have a room I call my Jamaica room that is essentially a spa room. It has a tile floor with a drain so it was perfect. That's why choosing the right house is important. I have an inflatable hot tub (cheap and portable) in there, a massage table, and a personal sauna (less than $100). And in the corner, I have a diffuser for aroma therapy.

So all this is to say that I take relaxation very seriously.

Salt lamps, artificial fireplaces, LED lighting with color control... there are many things you can add just to set a particular mood. When you combine all that with the right music...? There's a certain point that I can relax just thinking about it.

Stress is one of the enemies of higher vibration. It tethers you to the problems and struggles of life, especially the things we have to do just to survive. Alleviating stress can literally make you live longer. Having a pet can make you live longer for that reason.

I have a wall in my theater room that I call my Aquarium because I have 4 fish tanks, each one representing a different element: air, fire, water, earth. Earth is pretty barren right now, but if you can't do a garden you can do something similar with a fish tank and create a little biome for smaller life forms.

Also, under the heading of nature and relaxation... I like to spend time on my deck because there is a creek running through my backyard with lots of trees on the other side, providing privacy and shade and the sound of the water is very relaxing.

So all this in pretty well integrated into where I live. Outside of that, hiking and spending time in my inflatable (cheap) kayak...

You gotta enjoy life! But I'm talking about all this because my home is like my Garden (I did try a little garden but its a work in progress since I don't have a ton of sunlight in that area.) It's full of different "fruit"... things to do... things that make me happy just knowing that they're there. Too often spirituality is connected with poverty and struggle. It doesn't have to be that way. It shouldn't be that way. Abraham, according to the bible, was wealthier than some countries. Jacob was blessed as well. Do I struggle? Absolutely! But I try to balance that out, serving both wants and needs. The end result is hopefully healthy and happy. That's what it's all about. But the garden, for me, represents a base of operations. If your home base is well-built the rest becomes easier.

Later I may add more about games and socialization. There are many reasons one shouldn't neglect these things.


Messenger: JAH Child Sent: 3/8/2023 11:11:55 AM
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Greetings Seestem, greetings IPX Ninja
I think that was a great way to answer that question about "temporal states of the future". "The future is constantly becoming your present." That's a powerful quote right there.

And as for the first part of Seestem's post- well yes don't many people do that already? Due to their idea of a heaven in the afterlife? I think many people's actions are already skewed due to that idea of a reward in heaven/a punishment in hell after they die.

It reminds me of that philosophy that there's no such thing as true altruism because any altruistic acts always reflect back onto the person acting, either in giving them recognition or in giving them a sense of satisfaction for their good deeds, that no one can wholly do something for another person and not at all for themself. Not sure if it's true but it's a paradoxical situation to think about, similar to the idea of doing good deeds for good's sake alone vs. doing good deeds (or accepting a savior) just to get the reward of heaven.

IPX Ninja yes I agree the list is gonna be a personalized one. Everyone has different things they love and fulljoy.

Playing music (guitar, piano) and singing is my mom's happy place, because that's who she is, but obviously not everyone is a musician.

I guess it goes back to that idea of "know yourself". You have to discover your own path to joy, it's not gonna look the same as another's.

More Love Idren, more upfullness


Messenger: IPXninja Sent: 3/9/2023 2:18:34 PM
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Although I don't expect anyone to care I'd like to give some personal testimony. I'll try to be brief, especially because I have a habit of taking time away from things I could be doing for more selfish reasons.

But I will always say balance... is the key.

Between the years 1997-98 I was at Oakwood College, a Seventh-Day Adventist school in Huntsville, AL. This was after the story about chatrooms and thinking it must be the "devil-worshipping" pagans because of course... that is what Christianity was programming me to believe and that belief protected Christianity more than the Christian.

But serious thoughts were conflicting in my head. In my studies I was becoming more and more convinced that we were being deceived. I started going down the list of commandments in Exodus 20 and I could see how Christianity had interpreted their way into abusing each one. It's one of the reasons I was drawn to the Hebrew Israelites and Rastafari.

Christians were either substituting Sunday for the Sabbath, holding up the cross as a graven image, or professing this belief in the Trinity which absolutely did not exist in the mind of the Jewish rabbi Yeshua. I felt like there was paganism all around me and I lost the feeling that the churches I was going to was a holy place. How could it be if the spirit of God was not there? And I had seen a movie that truly had the effect the writers intended. It was called Stigmata. And while it appeared to be like other exorcist movies, this one had a hidden gem.

You see it mentioned the book of Thomas and suggested that the reason this book did not exist in the Christian canon was because it threatened the institution of the church.

How? Simply by saying the spirit of God was free and it was everywhere. It wasn't a revolutionary thought at the time it was written but it became revolutionary under the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. It defied the idea that they and their new priesthood were even relevant. The idea of a priest was the same as an agent. It was someone who stood between the person and God. Protestants would later come to the conclusion that, as the sacrificial lamb, "Jesus" had removed the need of the priest by becoming both the sacrifice and the intercessor.

Taking what I knew of YHWH or "Jah" from the OT, I knew that this person wouldn't suddenly be chill with all of these changes that made them more like polytheistic pagans than it made pagans like righteous Israelites. So what about them? What about all the people I was going to church with? What about my family? Friends? How could I mentally justify why there were all fine with this status quo but I was struggling?

And so I had to ask the question. Did they love him?

I thought this was the whole point. Not simply following some breadcrumbs towards some holy chalice so that you could have eternal life. What I started to see was fear; how afraid people were of God. I didn't see it as love. They thought that whatever God did to humanity was justified. Morality itself was something they were willing to set aside. At the same time I had the most heated and contentious debates online that I've ever had in life. The biggest and most hateful was this one guy, donibm, who claimed to have gotten his degree in divinity. After him, another man... after my beliefs had evolved... just mean-spirited as hell. Flat out told me while the other implied that they needed God in order to be good.

Nothing in my studies ever led me to believe that there would be a resurrection of the death that would have some line of people waiting for Jesus to wave some magical wand over their heads and make them into perfect people. If such a wand existed, why wait?

And yet, this is what they believed. And therefore it was less about being righteous and more about believing in the righteousness of "Jesus". But here in lies the problem. Following "Jesus" wasn't about gaining access to his riches by some magical word uttered on a death bed. It was about the process of conversion, the process of purification. Salvation wasn't about being saved from death but from sin. Following him meant following in his footsteps, not worshipping him on high pedestal. Michael Jordan was extremely talented but if you don't think you can do the same moves you'll never know.

At the end of the day... this... failure to love God enough to actually want to be like him... actually conform to the image of God... it hit me very deeply and I told myself from that point that I didn't care if I made it to whatever this "heaven" was... I wasn't going to pretend and do whatever activity others thought necessary to save myself. I didn't want the carrot or the stick so I said no to both. You see one can ignore them both. Balaam beat his donkey to the point where the bible says it spoke. I wonder if it sounded like Eddie Murphy in the mind of the writer, lol. But it ignored the beating because it saw danger that its rider did not.

Who is holding the stick? If you are worried about the stick or the carrot you may not see who is dangling one or the other in your face.

When you follow these things... you don't see that it "ha Shatan" (the adversary) who deceives with tricks and they say his greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn't exist but that too is a deception. The greatest trick is creating the trickster because you can hide behind it and no one sees that the offer isn't coming from a god or a devil but from a mere mortal human being who seeks the original sin/corruption of wealth and power. And the only way to get those things is from other people following blindly like sheep.

Being a sheep is not a compliment.

In the end, I think it is incredibly hard to love and fear God at the same time. You have to choose one. If you devote your life to chasing that heaven, dangled in front of you at the tip of that stick, you will NEVER get it. Why? Because that stick isn't moving. You are. The person holding the stick is riding on your back and using your energy to move himself forward. You can never catch the stick because once you have it you won't need the rider and won't need to continue taking him where he wants to go. And please believe... this is how the system of Babylon was created in the first place. It came in on the backs of believers.

Thank you for hearing my story.






Messenger: JAH Child Sent: 3/15/2023 8:07:52 PM
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Brother IPX that was a great reasoning and I thought it less of a personal story and more of a parable. I mean of course it came from your experiences but it was applicable to us all.

That imagery of the one holding the stick and the carrot riding on your back.. definitely a great visual to explain the shitstem.
And I guess whoever falls for that trick of chasing the carrot, well then they must be a donkey (an ass).

My mother talks to me also about becoming like God. She is a very faithful christian lady. I don't see the goal quite like us becoming god-like, but more that the godself infact became us-like... as in, the godself fractalized itself in order to experience an existence outside of singularity. So we already are god, in how I see it, just not god in the whole but god in the fractal state. Is it then our job to make it somehow back to that singularity? Or is that just going to happen anyways, is that the inevitable fate of creation, like a cosmic breath - out into creation and back into creator. Maybe our only job is just to accumulate experiences. I don't know! *shrugs* But I certainly don't aspire to be anything like that vengeful jealous murderous genocidal OT god, a god who knew the fate of Adam and Eve in the garden yet schemed to put the tree there anyways, queueing a hideous progression of events which could have all been avoided anyways. Personally I think we can all do better than to have him as a role model.

The Yeshua character does seem to be a better role model even. Yet I'm not sure if the two characters can be divided, or if they are too historically intertwined.

And that is why Haile Selassie I is the head of I&I, Ras Tafari. Because there is no greater man to look to for an example of living as the highest, the Most High. And Empress Menen equally so in the divine feminine expression. The balance of Their Majesties in a realistic, relatable, real-world example of what it looks like to live up in the heights of existence. To face life's troubles with dignity and faith. To experience the joys of life as a family unit. To serve the people with all we have available to us. Yes I, the divinity of I&I is in Rastafari.

Haile Love give thankhs for the beautiful reasoning as always, yene wendim.




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